Chapter 933: Blood dream(2)
Cain stood frozen, breath shallow and strangled in his chest, as Blake’s full presence pressed down upon him like a collapsing tower to the peasants below.
The shadow his brother cast, which had haunted the coasts of half a world and now would all of them, fell over him, swallowing him whole.
Cain kept his gaze lowered, even the faintest tilt of Blake’s head made him flinch.
He rembered too clearly the last ti Blake had raised a hand to him when Cain had been so foolish, as to play him jester for the life of Shawani’s family.
He waited for it now.He waited for the strike, for the crack of fist or the thud of palm.
Blake’s shadow swelled as his arm lifted.
Cain braced, jaw tightening, heart hamring like a trapped bird against his ribs. That sa shadow had stretched across the battlents of Khairo for months, had fallen on ships like a storm-front that brought only fire, had crushed a dozen n for every ten that lived to speak of it.
Yet no strike ca.
Instead, sothing heavy settled onto his shoulder, a hand, not violent, but weighted with a kind of gravity that terrified him more than any beating could. Cain opened his eyes, slow and stiff, and dared to look up. The relief he felt was imdiate, sweeping, almost dizzying, but it was quickly swallowed by a deeper, more consuming sha as everything he had shouted a mont prior rose again in his mind like bile.
Was this all the will he had? Broke at the hint of danger?
“Our father taught us that it is weakness to crave the opinions of others. Yet I find myself compelled to ask, at least from you.” His gaze sharpened as he asked “Do you think a monster?”
Cain stared into those eyes, those terrible, burning embers that had been the last sight of so many n, and wondered if this was the sa gaze the Azanian Imperial line t in their final monts, when Blake had walked into their chamber and erged monts later drenched in the crimson that had given him his na.
“Without a doubt,” Cain answered, his voice unflinching, because the truth was the only currency they had left between them.
Blake did not blink, nor recoil, nor strike him for insolence.He only inclined his head slightly and asked, “And what do you think of our people? Speak freely, no one but I will hear it.”
Cain didn’t know where the question led, but Blake’s expression was unreadable Still, there was no purpose in lying.
“I think,” Cain said, “that our people are exactly what the world calls us. The na they give us fits like a glove. Any attempt to deny it would be no more aningful than a shout lost in a storm.”
Sothing passed across Blake’s mouth, almost a smile, as if Cain had unknowingly confird an idea that long ago ford in his mind.
Blake stepped back, pacing slowly as he began to speak.”When I was little more than a lad, after Harmway, when our house lay in ruin and our coffers were picked clean by vultures who had once bowed before us, I took to the sea as far as the winds would carry . I knew that if our na was to stand among the nobles of Elio, if we were to prevent our own vassals from carving up the isle between them like a carcass, then the burden fell on alone.”
He paused, running a calloused thumb across a gouge in the marble floor, as though tracing the path of old mory.
“I was alone, Cain. As you were alone in your tower, so was I in my ships. The deck was my cell, the waves my walls. I faced two mutinies before I grew my first beard. One ca so close to killing I could feel the cold of the water waiting to swallow .”
A breath, a quiet laugh, astonishingly gentle.
“And yet I survived, because I knew no one else would haul from the deep. Then I t Kroll. We raided together, bled together, pulled each other from danger often enough that for a ti I believed friendship was a kind of salvation. A comfort. Sothing that softened the sea.”
His smile widened, soft and disarming, so monstrously out of place on the face that struck fear into n.
“It was a good friendship. A great one, even. But it did not blind . Not completely. I still believed, with the foolishness of youth, that our people were harsh because life was harsh, that they clawed only because they were cornered in the pit of the world. I thought it was circumstance that made us wolves.”
His expression hardened.
“I broke the treaty. I cast aside that oath that was expected of . I let the sea and my enemies judge and they did.”
Blake spat onto the marble, the sa marble that emperors and their jeweled wives had once walked upon, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“And it was then I understood. The truth was not that our people were forced by hardship to fend for themselves.”
He leaned closer, voice dropping to sothing dark and absolute.”It was simply our way, the one that we praise so much,that was the very one that made uss so miserable, we mistook it, though that it made us superior to the sheep we carve. Each man for himself, each woman for herself, each family gnawing at the next with a smile on their lips.”
He straightened to his full height, his shadow stretching across Cain again.”Our people were not rely abandoned, Cain. They were leaderless. Hungry. Desperate. And like beasts without a hand to guide them, they turned on one another.”
His voice deepened, resonant as a funeral bell.
“And so I learned the truth: our people did not need a hero.”A breath, steady.
“They needed a shepherd.”
Cain allowed himself a faint, brittle smile as Blake’s words finally settled, their aning unfurling to an unwelcod mind.
“So that was all this was about?” he murmured, with a chuckle “Not ambition, not greed, not the thrill of conquest, but so twisted desire to do good? Is this the grand root of it all?The reason we now stand a step away from a civil war that will have brother slaughtering brother, kin turning upon kin, until either a crown rests upon your brow, or our heads decorate a row of pikes?”
Blake did not bristle, nor sneer, nor give any sign of agitation. Instead he held Cain’s gaze with a calmness that was almost worse than any rage he could have displayed.”When I first set my mind upon that crown,” Blake began, his tone composed, solemn in a way few n ever heard from him, “I did not do so to bask in the glory of kingship. I did not dream of vaults overflowing with gold or cities chanting my na. I did so because it was the only way left to save our people from themselves. Order, Cain, discipline, purpose, a sharpened edge instead of a rusted blade. That is what I ant to forge.Our people are savages that only know how to destroy, we don’t have anything, nor music, nor achitecture. I am looking to change that.”
He stepped past him, pacing with the quiet certainty of a man who had long ago made peace with the horrors he would commit.”You have seen our people as I have seen them,” Blake continued, voice low yet carrying the weight of a sermon, “a nation enslaved not by chains but by their own lusts, their pleasures, their fleeting little hungers. They pursue glory not for the Confederation, not for our holand, but for their own pride.
They believe themselves rulers of the world because we toppled an empire and maid another, yet they do not consider that we lack the unity, the structure, the vision to seize what we have broken.”
He paused, turning his head slightly, and the fire behind his eyes flickered.”I do not fight because I wish to be King or Emperor. I fight because our people cannot unite unless soone seizes them by the reins and forces them toward destiny.”
Cain exhaled harshly through his nose.”With you at the head,” he said, unable to resist the jab.
Blake inclined his chin once.”With at their head,” he affird, without arrogance, without apology, only certainty.
Cain studied him then, truly studied him, as though seeing for the first ti the sheer scope of the man who stood before him. Blake filled the room , he was vast, relentless, impossible to ignore.
Cain did not know whether Blake’s speech was truth or manipulation, whether this man believed his own rhetoric or simply wore it like armor. But the conclusion remained the sa: thousands would die. Perhaps tens of thousands. Blake’s path would not end in a tidy victory or a single decisive battle; if he truly ant to mold their people into sothing new, he would purge dissent with the sa efficiency he used to purge enemy fleets.
Entire isles would perish for his dream.
The question escaped Cain before he understood he ant to voice it.”How far will you go?”
Blake’s answer was almost gentle.”As far as I must.”
The hand on Cain’s shoulder tightened, not painfully, but with a warmth that slid beneath the skin and into the marrow, an impossible warmth for a man whose touch had so often been cold.
“And I will have you with ,” Blake said, and there was no plea in his tone, only declaration. “All the way through, Cain. When it ends, and it will end, you will receive the place, the honor, the life that should always have been yours. You proved wrong. You showed that your blood is mine.”
His grip strengthened, and the shadow he cast enveloped Cain entirely.”You will stand beside as we shepherd our people into a new age. You will rise above the sa n who spat upon you, who whispered madness when your back was turned. You will command fleets and deliver orders. Lords will bow to you.”
Cain shook his head faintly, voice cracking with self-loathing.”They will never obey a cripple.”
Blake dismissed the objection with a calm severity.”Then we shall make new lords, and choose other sailors. I will shape that world, and you will walk into it with .”
The hand on his shoulder clenched once more, not asking, not offering, but binding.
In that mont Cain understood that his brother had not been seeking agreent or partnership or counsel, nor understanding. Blake was informing him of the future, not proposing it.
Consent had never been part of the equation.Cain had always been part of him.
Still as he smiled and accepted the warmth, he wondered what would his brother’s touch would be when he discovered the real reason he was there.
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